KEVIN ARNOLDTEACHES ME TO READ

The Wonder Years was a game changer for me in so many ways. Neal Marlens and Carol Black had written a brilliant pilot script, and I was asked to audition for the role of the Narrator, the older Kevin Arnold who was telling the whole story. The producers wanted to cast the part of the unseen character without the bias of seeing the actor doing it, so I went to a recording studio and recorded it anonymously. It was a huge part, so much dialogue, but it fit me like a glove. A kid in the 1960s, the exact same age as I had been, living in a suburb that felt like Bethesda and my junior high school, with neighborhoods where kids played football in the street and eighteen-year-old brothers were being shipped off to Vietnam. Written with such fondness, humor, and insight, this narrator had observations into my own childhood that helped me understand myself a little more. When I got to the final scene of that audition, talking about walking through the neighborhood at night, seeing families through their windows and the blue lights of people’s televisions, I was transported back to Bethesda, walking the neighborhood at night collecting my paper route money from my neighbors. I connected with the character so much that I felt like I just had to get the job. And I did. By the way, it turned out that Carol Black was my age and grew up in the town next to Bethesda, Silver Spring, Maryland. Like I said, it fit me like a glove.

It came time to make the deal. There really was no precedent for this type of part. The offer was low, about four thousand dollars an episode, but I didn’t care about that much. I only asked for two things—to have freedom to continue to act in movies without the show interfering with that, and to be able to direct the show. They agreed to both. The only thing left to negotiate was my billing. It was a cast of unknowns so, having a bit of a reputation already, I could’ve been the first one billed, but that wouldn’t make sense since Fred Savage was really going to be the star of the show. I could have been the final person billed, with a fancier credit like “And Daniel Stern as the Narrator” or “Daniel Stern as Adult Kevin Arnold,” but both of those made it feel like my character was separate from the story and I didn’t want to mess up the show’s integrity. I thought it was important for the audience to just listen to my words and not think about me; just like at the audition, the unseen character played by an unknown actor. So, much to my agent’s disbelief, I decided to take no billing at all. Just let my voice speak for itself . . . and Kevin Arnold.

Since I was going to direct an early episode, I shadowed the director of the pilot every day to get a feel for the style he was creating, as well as to get to know the actors and crew. Interestingly, they hired an actor to stand off camera and read the narration during the scenes, to give the actors the right timing to fill up those silent moments. Very smart idea, although weird to hear someone else doing my part. I gave the script to my brother, who by this point had moved to LA to be a television writer. I knew he could write this show, which was basically our childhood, and before we had even finished the pilot, David had written a brilliant future episode. Being on the set and in the editing room also gave me a chance to become friends with the producers, Neal and Carol. They were perfectionists, and I must have re-recorded different sections of the pilot at seven or eight different sessions. The show turned out to be amazing, and not only did the network pick it up for a series, but they also decided to premiere the show in the best TV slot possible, right after the Super Bowl. I gave David’s spec script to Neal and Carol, and they wisely hired him, as he went on to write some of the show’s best episodes and has had a sensational career himself. Narrating, directing, still a free agent for films, and with my brother working on the show—it was the perfect gig.

I would swing by the writer’s room sometimes to see David and Neal and play basketball during their breaks. One day, I happened to mention that I had been offered a movie that was going to shoot in Africa. The script wasn’t that great, and I wasn’t going to do it, but it would be awesome to go to Africa. Neal was worried that it might mess up the scheduling of the recording sessions for the show, and I reassured him it wasn’t going to happen (and it didn’t). But evidently Neal was not reassured, because my agent got a call the very next day informing him that I was fired. Ouch! Even though my contract explicitly said I was free to do any other movie I wanted to—and that I hadn’t even taken the movie—Neal had second thoughts and decided to get rid of me before the pilot aired. What a two-faced asshole he turned out to be. I was devastated. I loved the show, I loved my part, and I was very upset about losing my directing opportunity too. And it made it awkward for my brother who, of course, had to stay in this breakthrough job. The show premiered after the Super Bowl, with the very talented Arye Gross now narrating the story instead of me. I was bummed watching it and kind of pissed off because I had gotten fired for no good reason whatsoever, with Neal Marlens taking something I said so off-handedly, as a friend hanging out, to stab me in the back.

But then a crazy thing happened. The very next day, my agent got a call from the studio asking to rehire me. To this day, I still have no idea who brought me back, but somebody thought that whatever I was bringing to the role elevated it to a different level, and that I was an important member of the cast. It worked out beautifully. They tripled my salary, gave me bonus payments each time I had to re-record in the studio, guaranteed me three directing jobs per season, and reiterated the terms which allowed me to take any other job I wanted, anywhere in the world. I pretended there were no hard feelings toward Neal because my brother was working with him, and I would work with him closely while directing, but I never trusted him again. He is a very small man, with an enormous chip on his shoulder, and I think the fact that I am a foot taller than him makes him very competitive with me. That little fucker separated my shoulder when he blindsided me with a vicious hit during what was supposed to be a very casual game of touch football. He and Carol created a brilliant show and hired an outstanding writing staff and terrifically talented actors, but he really couldn’t handle the pressure of producing great television every week. I was very happy when he left after the first season and Bob Brush came in to helm the show through all of the following seasons.

I absolutely loved directing. Fred, Danica, Josh, Olivia, and Jason were fantastic young people. I loved them like my own children and directed them that way too. Dan Lauria and Alley Mills, top-notch actors, played the parents. I loved leading the crew and trying to get the best out of each person. The director is the conductor, aware of what note every instrument is playing, making sure they are all in harmony as they bring the score/script to life, and directing The Wonder Years was like leading the most talented orchestra in the world. I directed ten episodes, and it was like getting paid to go to film school. I grew in confidence on the set and loved the discipline of having to meet tight schedules and find creative solutions within those limits. And I loved working with actors, watching them.

When I first had to audition actors, I would hide in the back of the room, embarrassed to be the director, on the other side of the casting game. Knowing how much each actor wanted/ needed the job, I felt bad they had to go through the humiliation of auditioning, when each one of them is overqualified to begin with. But over the years, I realized that the actors are having fun—enjoying their chance to perform, putting themselves on the line with an outrageous choice of characterization, willing to take directions and help bring the story to life, picking up their instrument and seeing if they fit into this orchestra. After years of feeling like acting was a self-aggrandizing profession for egomaniacs, watching actors audition and perform, exposing their deepest feelings for our entertainment, education, and enjoyment, finally made me realize the nobility and importance of the acting profession.

I loved watching Fred and the gang grow up. They all had high academic ambition and were wrapped up in their on-set school, coming out to do their scenes but really thinking about whatever the hell they were studying in there. Fred went to Stanford, Danica is a brilliant mathematician who has written math books, Josh is a lawyer, and on and on. They have great parents who helped them navigate the minefield of being child actors. For my money, being a child actor is a lose/lose situation for a kid. Either you try and fail, personally rejected by the powers-that-be, which can really take a toll on a young ego, or you are in a hit TV show or movie, and then you have to deal with the consequences of fame, money, puberty, and all the rest of it in the public eye. The Wonder Years kids and their families dealt with it as well as any I have ever seen.

My salary kept going up and up, although not that high by today’s standards, but it was easy money. And when I was shooting a film, I was getting two paychecks at the same time (sweet!), going into recording studios in Chicago, Reno, San Francisco, Rome, or wherever I was on location to record for The Wonder Years. When I was doing City Slickers in Santa Fe, I had to get the narration out fast for broadcast and couldn’t find a recording studio in time, so I had the sound guy from the film come over to the house I was renting, and we recorded it there. It was a very echo-y tile house, so I actually recorded it on my bed, in my pajamas, with the blanket over my head to deaden the sound and a flashlight to read the script. When we sent it in, they loved the quality of the recording and wondered what studio we used. Go figure. The other unforeseen bonus to the job was I was suddenly hot in the commercial voiceover world. The Madison Avenue commercial people are a whole other breed of human, and trying to please those executives can be a trying experience. When I recorded a commercial for Burger King, I must have said, “The winds of change are blowing with a sandwich made a whole new way,” about six thousand times, in every possible inflection, before that idiot director finally thought it was perfect. What the fuck does that even mean? It was a hamburger, for fuck’s sake!

But maybe the most life-changing thing about my wonderful years on The Wonder Years was that I actually learned to read. I had already gotten a little bit better at reading from reading more and more scripts. I even ventured into reading books for fun every so often, once I discovered Harry Crews and Elmore Leonard, although they still took me a while, fighting through my dyslexia. The years of reading The Wonders Years stories out loud, week after week, year after year, vanquished my fear of reading out loud, of the dreaded “cold reading,” a fear I thought I would never overcome. I can now pick up any book or script or article and read it cold, almost flawlessly, with meaning and understanding. I have no idea how I do it, except that so many times I was handed a new rewrite of a Wonder Years script and had to read it cold, with meaning and understanding, so my brain learned how to process the information and make it come out of my mouth, while keeping me and my fears out of the way. I am still flabbergasted and proud every time I do that.

Narrating the show was the opportunity of a lifetime. Every script was great, and I loved my part in each one. Every week I got to tell my story to America. Sure, I was playing Kevin Arnold, remembering his stories. But his stories always felt like my stories—my first kiss, bad teachers, great teachers, my older sister, being a hippie, the music, and on and on. My connection to the show was bone-deep and the connection the show had with audiences, and still has, makes me deeply thankful to have been the voice of this seismic cultural experience.

The show ended after six years, one short of where I think it should have ended. If Kevin had had one more year, we would have watched him graduate high school and deal with the final coming-of-age rituals that happen at that time. But for whatever reason, they pulled the plug. It was a late decision, and the writers had to try to write a decent finale in a very short time, with no chance of the real groundwork being laid in the shows leading up to the last one. But like the true champions they were, they wrote a beautiful final script, wrapping up stories, giving glimpses into the future and saying a heartfelt goodbye to the audience that had been with us the whole time. In the final moment of the show, the premise of the whole series, that Kevin Arnold is now an older man telling the story of his childhood, comes into play for the first and only time. Suddenly there is another voice on the narration track, the voice of a child talking to the Narrator, interrupting his storytelling and asking him to come outside and play. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but that very last day, I brought my son Henry to the studio and he read those lines, playing the unseen son to my unseen character. Like I said, from the very first time I read it, The Wonder Years always felt like it was really my own personal story that I was telling every week, and having Henry there bringing it to a close was almost more than I could handle. The recording session lasted much longer than usual because I kept crying in the middle of the reading, so sad to see it end and so proud of what we had accomplished.